Review: The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson

The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I thought the premise of this book was really interesting, but it got off to a slow start. I felt like I kept reading it and I wasn't getting anywhere, I'm glad I kept with it though. It picked up at about the halfway point, and kept a great pace through the end. The story is told with the chapters alternating between past and present. The present time chapters are told from the first person perspective of main character June while the chapters of the past are told from the perspective of our other main character Peter. The alternating times and perspectives took a bit of getting used to, but the writing was excellent. The ending left me wanting more and wanting to check out more of Wilson’s work. His attention to detail in both the technical and historical areas is fantastic.

June is a mechanician, a scientist who has devoted her life to the study of clockwork artifacts. She's been inspired by an artifact that she wears around her neck and has yet to discover all of its secrets. It was given to her by her grandfather. He found the artifact in 1942 in Stalingrad after an encounter with an invincible man, an avenging angel, who saved his life. Peter is that avenging angel who June's grandfather saw, and the artifact is a relic he lost that day. Peter is an avtomat or a clockwork man, who is much older than anyone knows. His story begins in Moscow 1709 when he is awakened from a long slumber by another mechanician of Peter the Great’s court. Peter and his clockwork sister Elena embark many journeys together. Each avtomat must serve their “word” to fulfill a deeper purpose and trying to uncover the purpose of their creation. Peter tries to fulfill his word by devoting himself to monarchs and protecting Elena.  Elena's word is logic, she devotes herself to learning everything she can, but quickly masters every topic.  Elena is crafted as a young child with features much like a doll and the two must move frequently as their lack of aging draws questions from the humans that serve them.  As time passes Peter finds himself unable to fulfill his word which is essentially justice, and Elena longs for companionship of other of their kind, logical and strategic challenges. They both find themselves in a clockwork war with an enemy they can’t remember, hiding from her as well as humans. June finds herself drawn into the avtomat war and the only one who can figure out their mechanical secrets and save them all.  June accepts her role in the dangerous clockwork war and is quickly accepted into the avtomat society because of the artifact she holds and her ability to understand her new machine companions.

This book will be published on August 1st, 2017.  I highly recommend it if you like steampunk, robots, sci-fi, Russian history, or any combination of those subjects.

I used this as my popsugar challenge to read a steampunk novel.  That puts me at 26 novels read or listened to for the challenge, halfway done!


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